


even the last of the blue-eyed babies know

by lastwingedthing



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Shireen Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-04 03:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20464514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwingedthing/pseuds/lastwingedthing
Summary: Bucky falls out of the sky into the strangest place he's ever been - and that's saying something.





	even the last of the blue-eyed babies know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).

Bucky fell for a long time. The world around him was a blur of coloured light, strange sounds on the edge of his hearing, buffeting waves of force that sent him spinning and tumbling as he fell.

When Strange had realised that the laboratory’s self-destruct had been triggered and shouted for everyone to jump into the portal, they’d all leapt together, but Bucky had lost hold of the others almost immediately. He hoped Sam and Wanda and the others were okay… but there was nothing he could do if they weren’t.

He had enough to worry about for himself. It was hard to make sense of things here, and it was making him nervous. Bucky was losing track of time; he couldn’t have said whether it had been a minute or an hour when the colours started to change, flickering and pulsing. There was a burst of red light –

And then he tumbled into a waist-high snowbank.

Sputtering, Bucky pulled himself to his feet. He was in a clearing in some kind of pine forest, and it was snowing hard. He didn’t recognise his surroundings, a tall dark forest in heavy snow; it could have been Russia or Canada or Scandinavia, but probably wasn’t any of them. Far away through gaps in the trees he could see mountains.

Grimly he checked himself over. His usual emergency survival kit was stashed around his clothes and the compartments in his arm: rations, water canister, lighter, knives, all the rest. He still had his compass, too, but it didn’t seem to be working here, swinging wildly in all directions. And he’d kept hold of his gun even in his fall, which was something.

But his clothes weren’t really suited for this weather; before he’d jumped through that portal he and the other Avengers had been in northern California on a mild spring day. He could survive cold better than most people, but not forever, and he sure as hell wouldn’t enjoy it.

Given all that, there wasn’t any point waiting around here for one of his friends to show up. Bucky didn’t really understand the portals, but he’d learned enough from listening to Strange to gather that the chances of any of his friends falling out of the sky in this exact spot at this exact time were almost non-existent. He’d be much better off leaving to find his bearings – and if he was lucky, some new clothes.

He’d find a place to wait out the weather safely, and then he’d find a way to blend in, fit in with the locals somehow. If they didn’t know of a way to cross the universe then he’d wait until Strange or Wanda came to find him.

They would come for him, he could trust them. It had taken a while, but he'd learned that lesson now.

Bucky looked around himself one last time, fixing his bearings as best he could, and then he started walking.

He’d been moving for almost an hour when he finally heard it – human voices talking somewhere up ahead, over the low bank to his right, clinking metal, maybe – horses?

The voices didn’t make sense, at first, but as he focused on them, trying to figure out what language they were speaking, he felt a strange sensation like someone had tapped their knuckles on his skull – and suddenly he _could_ understand.

Weird – well, Strange, probably. Bucky thought the wizard had done something odd as they jumped, but he hadn’t been able to think about it at the time. Bucky really was lucky in his friends.

Now that he could understand them, the people ahead sounded like soldiers, complaining about missing rations and about command – no, they were more than just complaining, they were halfway to mutinous. Suddenly they were all shouting at each other, something about a mad king getting them all killed…

Moving as slowly and carefully as he could in the deep snow, Bucky moved up on his belly up the bank to get a look at them. And then he stopped up there, staring.

It was like he’d stumbled into a movie set. The soldiers looked positively medieval, with their horses and bows and swords. They weren’t wearing metal armour, but that would be stupid, in this weather; still, their leather jerkins and furs looked like they could have come straight out of a history book.

Well, blending in with the locals had just gotten a whole lot harder.

Silently, Bucky wiggled backwards and clear of the bank.

He skirted the edge of the army for a while; an hour maybe, or more. The bulk of the army was camped in a wide clearing in the forest, with some kind of broad dirt road running through the middle – easy enough to stay in the trees to avoid them.

But he’d been walking for a long time. The cold was deep in his bones now.

He could have tried to steal spare clothes from the camp, but that would be risky. Bucky didn’t want to mess with any military acting like this; every time he saw any soldiers they were caught in little knots of men, talking angrily, rather than training or doing the kind of chores they ought to have been keeping busy with. Not a good state of mind for them to be in if they caught him stealing.

He’d skirt the army, he decided, try and find some local farmers or a village to hole up in. With this many military men wandering around, any ordinary people would probably welcome a mercenary who would defend them for his keep.

That resolution lasted until Bucky came out from behind a thick clump of trees and saw the tall stake on a platform piled high with firewood – and the girl a group of soldiers were dragging towards it, screaming.

“No fucking _way_,” Bucky said, shocked into speaking aloud. “_Fuck _this place.”

Yeah, he wasn’t going to sit back and watch this happen. Even a mass murderer didn’t deserve to die so cruelly – and this was just a kid, not much older than those boys who’d hung around him demanding stories in Wakanda.

The snow and the trees provided a bit of cover, allowing him to get fairly close to the men before they saw him and started shouting questions. That was when he started firing.

Turning a machine gun on people armed only with medieval technology wasn’t exactly fair, but Bucky wasn’t particularly bothered by that, given the circumstances.

As he’d expected, most of the men shouted and ran pretty quick, once they figured out that there were bullets coming from his gun, and that they could kill. A few stayed – two of them were armed with longbows, which was somewhat concerning, but he was shielding himself with his metal arm, and the arrows bounced right off it. That gave him time to aim at _them_, and his range was better.

He didn’t dare fire too close to the girl, but most of the men dragging her had dropped her and fled. He fired some more towards her other side, still moving towards her; suddenly she had a clear path, and she saw it. She pulled herself out of the grip of the last man holding her and ran.

She wasn’t running right for him, instead moving at an angle to get into the shelter of the trees without straying into his line of fire. Smart kid. He covered her until she reached the treeline, keeping off a few more archers – they weren’t aiming at the girl, which might have been luck, but might have just meant they were trying to keep her alive to burn. Then once she’d almost disappeared into the snow and the trees he laid down one last burst of suppressing fire and followed her.

He’d lost a lot of bullets, but there hadn’t been any other choice. It would be alright.

Bucky slung his gun over his back and ran after the girl, following her deeper into the forest. She kept going for a good long while, longer than he would have expected, but eventually she stumbled to a halt beside a half-fallen tree and bent over, gasping for breath.

He approached her with his good hand open and empty and the metal one flat at his side, trying to keep a neutral unthreatening smile on his face.

“Hey, time for a break, huh? What’s your name, kid?”

She stared at him for a long time, eyes big and scared. Up close it was clear she had some kind of scarring on the side of her face, the skin there thickened and scaly. Bucky really fucking hoped that wasn’t the reason they’d tried to burn her.

“My name is Shireen Baratheon,” she said quietly. “I owe you my thanks, ser. But why – who are you? Why did you save me?”

“My name’s Bucky,” he replied. “I thought you might need a friend.”

Her face almost crumpled. “Are – are you a wizard? Or are you – were you sent –”

She trailed off, but Bucky figured that however that sentence ended, it wouldn’t describe him particularly well.

“No, not me. I’m nothing special. Where I come from, I’m just an ordinary soldier.” Not _strictly_ true anymore, but the kid – Shireen – seemed frightened enough already, without bringing Avengers or assassins into the picture. “My friend’s a wizard, though. I ended up here by mistake, but I guess you could say it was his fault…”

He stopped talking suddenly, listening.

“Sorry, Shireen,” he said quietly. “I think we’re about to have some company.”

She looked terrified, but still fighting her own fear; brave kid.

He smiled at her again, gesturing for her to take shelter behind a thick tangle of bushes half-covered by snow. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of them. Just stay down.”

She nodded seriously, biting her lip and hunkering down, wrapping her heavy cloak more tightly around herself. So far she’d obeyed him without question – shock, probably, and fear, rather than any particular faith in him; he doubted she’d trust him properly any time soon.

He hoped she wasn’t going to watch this next part.

Bucky backtracked a little, moving towards the voices so as to intercept them before they reached Shireen. He dropped down into the snow, kneeling down with his head hanging low and his gun on the ground in front of him, trying to look exhausted and an easy target.

There were only five men following them, and they weren’t archers. Big mistake.

They approached him slowly, then rushed forward once they realised he wasn’t holding his weapon. But Bucky wasn’t about to waste any more bullets when he didn’t need to. Moving much faster than an ordinary man, he sprang upwards, his combat knife already open in his right hand.

He killed the closest two fast, knife across their throats. The third was about his own height and size; that one he killed with his left arm, smashing the heavy vibranium into his neck to crush his windpipe and keep any blood from getting on his clothes.

By that time the last two had their swords out. Bucky blocked both blows with his left arm; one sword splintered immediately, the other bounced back with enough force to make the last soldier lose his grip on it. They both fell back in shock; easy enough to kill them quickly, the same way he had the third.

Behind him he heard Shireen let out a shocked gasp.

“Sorry about that,” he said to her over his shoulder, dropping down to clean the blood off his knife and hands in the snow.

“It’s alright,” she said, very quietly. “I have seen men die before. And these were loyal to the Lord of Light. They would have taken me straight back to my father.”

Her _father_?

Fucking hell.

Bucky didn’t know what to say to that – what the hell could he say? He’d suffered a lot of bad times in his life, but never such an intimate, personal betrayal.

“I’m still sorry you had to see that.” He hesitated, meeting her eyes. “And I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, but I’m not dressed for winter, and I’m going to freeze to death if I don’t get some proper gear soon.”

She dropped her eyes immediately, but nodded.

“I should – ” Her voice caught in her throat; she stopped and swallowed, then started again. “I should take some of their clothes too. I don’t want to be recognised as the Baratheon princess…”

_Princess? _Bucky had so many questions, but there wasn’t time right now, and he wasn’t going to push this kid when she was so clearly traumatised.

“You wait here and rest for a minute,” he told her firmly. “I’ll get gear for both of us.”

The two men he’d killed with his knife were covered in blood, of course, but he went through the pockets and folds of their gear anyway, finding three daggers, coins, a long piece of rope, a whetstone and several bags of rough rations – mostly rock-hard bread and dried fish. One of the men even had a pair of good fur-lined boots that looked to be Bucky’s size; fortunately he hadn’t bled on them. The other three had more promise; as well as similar supplies, their clothes were unstained and of decent quality. Obviously, whoever this Lord of Light was, his followers were doing well for themselves.

He picked out the best of everything and set it aside. Then he laid the bodies down in a deep hollow in the snow and buried them in it; no time to dig down to the ground to bury them properly, but at least this way they’d be covered and relatively hard to find.

He went back and cleaned up the rest of the mess, the blood and the tangle of footprints – the falling snow would cover it all before too long, and disguise the spot where the bodies were hidden, but Bucky liked to be thorough, and he didn’t know how long it would be before more soldiers came looking for these ones.

Only when he’d finished all of that did he carry the gear over to Shireen, who was staring blankly at the place where he’d buried the bodies.

“Hey, kid,” he said softly, gesturing to her. “These look like they should fit you.”

He turned around to give her some privacy and pulled his choices on. The furs stank a little, but the relief of their warmth was so great, Bucky didn’t care in the slightest.

“I'm finished,” Shireen said, after a long pause. When he turned back around, Bucky saw that she’d exchanged her fancy leather coat for the coarser soldier’s furs; she’d even tucked her hair up inside an ugly fur cap she must have picked up off the ground. He didn’t doubt she was still wearing a dress under there, but the fur coat and cloak combo were so long that it was honestly hard to tell what she was wearing, and with that cap she could easily pass for a boy.

“Good thinking, kid,” he said, nodding approvingly at her.

She smiled at him shyly, but it was wobbly and insincere. God, poor kid – but he didn’t want to give her a chance to start thinking properly about what had almost happened to her, not until they’d reached some kind of shelter.

Thinking about that, he opened up one of the compartments in his arm and pulled out one of the candy bars he had stashed there. He opened it, broke it into two very unequal pieces and offered the larger piece to her.

“You should eat this – sweet things are good when you’re in trouble.”

She took it uncertainly, wary, just watching while he ate his share. Only after he’d finished did she take a tiny nibbling taste; then her eyes widened and she finished the rest in three enormous bites.

“That was wonderful! What is it?”

He grinned. “It’s a snickers bar – a speciality of my homeland.”

“Thank you, ser,” she said, actually curtseying; he could believe she was a princess, all of a sudden.

Bucky hesitated, not wanting to break the moment and remind her of their situation, but there wasn’t really a choice. The snow was getting thicker, and it would be night soon.

“Shireen – do you know if there’s somewhere we might shelter nearby? A town or village, maybe?”

The smile slid from her face; she shook her head.

“I don’t think so. We are in the Wolfswood, and there are few folk living here. We passed a village two days ago on the Last River, but my – my father said there would be no more until we reached the Stark lands round Winterfell.”

Bucky bit his lip. “How about farms?”

Shireen hesitated, thinking. “I have never been in this land before… I’m sorry, ser, I do not know. I heard the men say that there are fisherfolk living on the edge of the Long Lake to the east, but I don’t know which direction we came through the forest, I don’t know which way we ought to go to find the lake…”

“The road is that way, if it helps,” Bucky said, pointing back the way they came. “I could see tall mountains to the northwest beyond it, and hills ahead of us to the east.”

Shireen’s face lit up. “Those must be the Lonely Hills! If we walk that way we must come to the lake, it lies between the hills and the kingsroad. I’m sure we’ll find shelter there.”

It was a hard walk, though. And before long the grey light started to fade into twilight.

Shireen was obviously growing exhausted; Bucky gave her some of his water from his canteen, refilling it with snow to melt against his body, and some of the dried fish to chew as they walked, but she was still starting to stumble with exhaustion. If night fell before they found shelter he’d build a snow cave to protect them from the cold, but the close quarters would likely be deeply uncomfortable for the kid, and if they were in for a real blizzard, as seemed increasingly likely in this rising wind, they could be in real trouble.

Pretty soon it was dark enough that Bucky had to use the light built into the palm of his metal arm, powered by a tiny vibranium engine deep inside – Shuri had _way_ too much fun building this arm for him. The sudden brightness made Shireen gasp, but she seemed too tired to really notice or care. _Half an hour_, Bucky told himself, _then I build that snow cave. _He didn’t think the kid could take any more than that.

But finally, through the thickening snow, Bucky stumbled against something that wasn’t a fallen tree branch – worked wood, some kind of fenceline.

He followed it round in the direction they’d been heading, hoping desperately he wasn’t leading them astray. Finally a dark shape rose up ahead of them through the swirling snow – some kind of stockade wall, with a gate.

But he couldn’t smell smoke, couldn’t hear human voices. A bad sign.

Moving slowly and carefully, gesturing Shireen to stay quiet, he came up to the gate – which was hanging loosely from its hinges. _Shit_.

He pushed it and rushed through, tugging Shireen after him – he didn’t dare let her out of sight. The narrow snow-covered yard was deserted, but there were ominous shapes under the snow. Wincing, he poked one with a foot, and uncovered a bloody human arm still clutching a sword; the rest of the body was hidden under the snow.

No lights, no smoke; it looked like soldiers had already found this place. And everyone was dead.

The deep eaves of the main building seemed to have sheltered part of the yard, though; the snow was only inches deep there, barely covering the frozen mud. And as they approached it, something moved, growling –

“A dog,” Shireen said, startled. “Poor thing!”

The dog was guarding two more bodies, these dressed in simpler clothing than the soldiers’ uniforms in the yard. Probably they were some of the folk who had once kept this farm. Bucky winced, feeling sudden terrible compassion for the poor loyal animal.

But he couldn’t think about the dog for long: behind it and over to the right, the heavy main door of the building still seemed to be latched properly closed. There might be supplies inside still, firewood and a proper hearth to burn it in – a warm shelter, at the very least.

Long ago it would have felt wrong to rob the dead, but Bucky had lived through total war before; he knew now it was better to steal from the dead than from the living.

They skirted round the dog, which growled again but let them pass. Inside the building actually felt warm – the reason why was quickly obvious. It was full of live and healthy cows which immediately crowded round them, desperate with hunger and thirst.

Bucky was a city kid, but he’d learned what to do about cows in Wakanda. There was a big barrel of water that the animals’ warmth had kept unfrozen in one corner; he filled the empty water trough with it, then went outside to fill it with clean snow to melt again.

While he was doing that, Shireen investigated a closed door and found the big room beyond it stacked floor to ceiling with hay, straw, even dried leaves – she took the first armful of fodder out herself, and then he came and helped her with several more. Soon the cows were head down, eating ravenously.

It was good to see live warm things after all the snow and the bodies, good to have made them happy so easily.

“We should do something for the dog too,” Shireen said quietly; Bucky nodded in agreement. They found some kind of bucket in the back room and filled it with water; then Bucky made Shireen stay behind the closed door while he slid the bucket and a big handful of dried fish as close to the dog as he dared. It was big, something like a husky, and he’d bet it could do a lot of damage if it decided they were getting too close.

Thankfully it just growled at him again, sniffed at the water and then drank.

Poor thing; it had survived something awful too, and it didn’t want to let its owners go. Bucky hoped they’d be able to save it.

Back inside, he realised that the building wasn’t just a barn. There was a hearth over on one side, blocked from the cattle by a low partition, and a loft built over the hearth where it seemed the inhabitants of this farm might once have slept. It made sense, in such a cold climate; the smell of old smoke and cattle all together wasn’t wonderful, but it was worth it for the extra warmth.

The fire had gone out, of course, but there was a pile of wood stacked not far away. Bucky stacked some up in the hearth, found a box of dried bark for kindling and got the fire started. Shireen gasped in wonder as a flame popped out of his lighter with only a click. It was a pity he’d have no way to refill it once the fuel ran out, but that was a problem for later. He had more important things to worry about right now. 

There was a big iron cauldron over to one side of the hearth, and the big covered clay pots lined up against the wall were filled with grain and dried beans. There were strings of onions hanging from the ceiling, too, and more twisted dried fish, hung high enough to presumably be out of reach of the dog.

Bucky nodded in quiet relief at the supplies and set the cauldron on its hooks. He added water, grain, salt, onions, a few dried fish… it wasn’t going to be anything fancy, but it would be hot and filling and he absolutely could not wait for the grain to be tender enough to chew.

As the flames grew higher, the room was filled with a comfortable warm glow. The wind was howling outside, and the horror of whatever war was going on in this country was as close to them as the poor frozen bodies in the yard outside, but there was nothing Bucky could do for them; what mattered right now was that he’d saved the kid, and gotten both of them to shelter.

He turned to look at her. She was sitting with her knees folded and her arms wrapped round them, staring into the fire with a distant unhappy look.

He bit his lip. He should say something, should try to comfort her… but he had no idea _what_ to say, and he was afraid of making it worse.

Before he could make up his mind, she looked up at him, a sudden look of resolution on her face.

“Good ser… I owe you my thanks, I do not mean to be rude…” she turned anguished eyes up at him. “But truly, why did you save me? _Who are you_?”

Bucky sighed, half-smiling; he didn’t blame the kid for being suspicious, but this was going to be tricky. “I do know my story sounds crazy, but I promise, it’s true. I’m a soldier, and I’m not from this place. You’ve seen the weapon I carry, all my things – you know I’m not from round here.” She met his eyes and nodded solemnly; there really wasn’t any way round it. God only knew what she thought of his arm. “Well, I really did come here by accident. There was a criminal in my homeland, and I was with a group of other people like me, trying to arrest him before he harmed the town nearby.”

He hesitated, trying to find a way to explain his story in a way that might make sense to someone of her background.

“In the fighting the building caught fire, and we were trapped. We couldn’t get out any normal way. But my friend, the magician – he found a kind of gate, a door that leads to strange places. I can’t tell you how it works, I don’t know. None of us really know how to control those doors, though I hear there’s some people who can. But we were going to burn… we had no choice but to trust to luck and jump through the door.” He smiled at her, wider this time. “It was chance that I ended up here, that’s all. But I’m glad I ended up here with you.”

She bit her lip, thinking. “What of your friends? Are they alright?”

Bucky shook his head. “I don’t know. But the doors lead to many places – I wouldn’t have expected any of them to end up in exactly the same place as me.”

“I hope you find them,” Shireen said quietly. “I hope they are well, wherever they are.”

“Thanks,” he answered. “I’m sure they’ll be okay. I’ve just got to stick around here for a while, and they’ll come find me.”

He was pretty sure they were okay. Given what else they’d all survived…

And he and Shireen had enough problems of their own. God, he didn’t want to push the kid any further, but he had to find out more about this place, whatever the hell was going on with that army he’d rescued her from. If he was going to be stuck here for a while – with a kid to look after, no less – then he didn’t have any choice.

“That army back there,” he started carefully, hating himself a little as Shireen immediately flinched. “Who are they? Are they likely to come after us?”

“I don’t know.” She was looking down and away from him now, voice gone dull. “My father – he’s the king, the one true king of the Seven Kingdoms. He was supposed to fight the Bolton pretender and take Winterfell back for the Starks. But we’d lost many men at the wall, and then our supplies, and men kept deserting. And the snow wouldn’t stop…”

She looked up at him with a face suddenly streaked with tears.

“I knew we were in trouble, and I wanted to help him! I told him I’d do anything to help! But the Red Priestess said that if he sacrificed king’s blood in the fire, the Lord of Light would end the storm and grant my father the victory. And I was the only king’s blood he had…” She shook her head fiercely. “I didn’t want to die, I didn’t want to die like that! He’s burnt others for her before, I’ve seen it…”

Her voice trailed off, choked into silence.

Bucky swallowed, hard. “I’m sorry…”

She went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “The snow hasn’t stopped, it’s gotten worse. No-one but a Northman could fight in this. My father can’t win against the Boltons if his army is freezing and starving… But he won’t ever give up, and my mother won’t ever leave him. They’re probably going to die. They might be dead already! I didn’t want to die, but it’s my fault if they’re dead now instead of me!”

She was crying too hard to talk now. Bucky felt ill; there was nothing he could say that could fix this.

“It’s not your fault,” he said softly. He reached out and hugged her round the shoulders, carefully, and felt her collapse against his chest, still crying. “It’s mine, if it’s anyone’s – I chose to save you. Your parents made their choices, too, and you’re not responsible for them. They could have run, tried to save as many of their soldiers as they could, instead of pushing on against hopeless odds. They chose not to do that. And they chose themselves instead of you. Any parent who would sacrifice their own child to save themselves isn’t worth the name.”

He shook his head; Shireen’s tears were quiet, but they hadn’t stopped.

“Shireen… I don’t think it would have worked, anyway. I walked round the edges of your camp for a long time before I found you; the army I saw was already falling apart. Even with a magic spell to stop the snow, you can’t win battles when your army’s in that state.”

Eventually Shireen sat up, wiping her eyes.

“But my father is the rightful king. He _had _to fight.”

“Did he?” Bucky asked. “Seems to me, a real king would have tried harder not to get so many of his people killed.”

She shook her head, despairingly.

“But he couldn’t bend the knee to the pretender, he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. And if he didn’t kneel the Lannisters and their allies would have attacked him anyway, trying to force him to submit. So he had to fight either way.”

“Well, maybe,” Bucky said. He wasn’t going to argue with her now, not in this state. Maybe when the shock and grief was less fresh, she’d be able to listen to him better.

He looked at the iron pot, leaned over to give it a quick stir.

“Never mind that now,” he said, trying a smile. “Looks like the food’s cooked – I’m starving!”

They both ate ravenously; Bucky needed more food than an ordinary person, thanks to the serum, and from the sound of things Shireen had been hungry for weeks. Even so, Shireen refused to eat anything until they’d poured a little of the hot stew in a bowl for the poor dog outside. It growled a little less at them, this time.

After Bucky had finished his third bowl he leaned back and stretched, feeling content and happy for the first time since he’d fallen into this strange place. Food and a warm place to sleep made all the difference; but he wasn’t ready to sleep just yet.

He didn’t want to bring up Shireen’s family again, but maybe…

“You know, I really am a stranger here,” he said. “I don’t know anything about this country, or any of those families you mentioned…”

Shireen looked up in surprise. “Truly? You have not heard of the Seven Kingdoms?”

Bucky shook his head, amused. “I’m from _very _far away.”

“Well, there are truly nine kingdoms, but there were only seven when Aegon the Conqueror came and united them all, and we call them the Seven Kingdoms still, or the land of Westeros. Though in truth Westeros includes the lands beyond the wall, but no southern king has ever ruled there…” She shook her head suddenly, moving herself away from the digression. “This land is the North, we are near to the lord’s seat of Winterfell. Ramsay Bolton rules there now, but all in the North know he is an usurper. He rules through his wife, Sansa Stark, but everyone knows he married her by force.”

“Poor woman,” Bucky said, and Shireen nodded sadly. Her family name was a bit of a coincidence, but surely nothing more than that.

“The Riverlands are the next kingdom to the south, ruled by House Tully, but the wars have been very hard there, I hear, and I do not know if Lord Edmure Tully still rules. Then there is the Vale, east of the Riverlands beyond the Mountains of the Moon. House Arryn rules there but their current lord is a child and he has played little part in the wars. South of the Vale are the Crownlands, ruled directly from the Iron Throne, and south of the Crownlands are the Stormlands, where my own family, the Baratheons, are the rightful lords. Dorne is the southernmost kingdom, beyond the Red Mountains, ruled by the princes of House Martell; they have kept to themselves since the old ruling house, the Targaryens, fell. Northwest of Dorne is the Reach, ruled by House Tyrell; they are loyal to the pretenders, and Margery Tyrell is wed to Tommen Waters the pretender king. The Westerlands are north of the Reach, ruled by the Lannisters, the kin of Tommen’s mother Cersei; they are the rulers of the Seven Kingdoms now, though they claim that they only serve the pretender Tommen as my uncle’s heir.”

She shook her head angrily; still, she seemed to enjoy the recitation of places and lords – likely she had to memorise it all as a young child.

It was a lot of information, but any insight into politics would be useful. Bucky nodded to himself, trying to memorise as much as he could.

“Oh! And of course there are the Iron Islands in the northwest, ruled by House Greyjoy, but they are small and poor, and most forget them, but I should not.”

“And your family are the rulers of them all?” he asked

She nodded seriously. “Aegon the Conqueror of House Targaryen first united the Seven Kingdoms, but his line grew weak and unsteady, and the last king, Aerys, was mad. Twenty years ago my uncle Robert rose in rebellion against the Mad King with the Starks, the Tullys and the Arryns, and when all the Targaryens were dead Robert took the throne and married Cersei Lannister. But after he died Lord Stark discovered that all his children were bastards – Cersei Lannister lay with her own _brother _to get them, truly, as if she’d been a Targaryen herself – and even though the Lannisters killed him, Lord Stark wrote to my father with the truth before he died. My father is Robert’s only living brother, the last trueborn Baratheon man, so the throne belongs to him by right.”

Bucky shook his head. “And that’s what the war’s been about?”

“They called it the war of five kings. But save my father, all the others are dead…”

She looked away, face pained; obviously she was remembering that her father might be dead by now, too.

If that was the case, she was the heir to an incredible kingdom… bits of medieval history were floating uncomfortably into Bucky’s mind.

“Does you father have allies who might protect you? Or family?”

Shireen sighed and looked away.

“Many of my father’s bannermen did not follow him north, after he was defeated at the Blackwater. I could go to them…” she trailed off uncomfortably.

“But you don’t think they’d protect you?”

She looked uncomfortable for a long moment, then shook her head. “They'd have to hide me from the Lannisters and their spies. But everyone in Westeros has heard that Stannis Baratheon’s heir is a girl with greyscale scars on her cheek. I don’t know if I can truly hide anywhere. And if I am – if I am truly the last Baratheon, then the Lannisters will pay a fortune for me, as soon as they hear I live. They’ll wed me to one of their kin and rule my lands through him, like they tried to do to Sansa Stark…”

“But you’re just a kid!” Bucky burst out.

Shireen looked up at him strangely. “I’ll be fifteen in a few moons, ser. I’m not a child.”

_But you are_, Bucky thought sadly. The thought of this kid forced into marriage with a man twice her age or more… it made him feel ill. One nice thing about the twenty-first century, a lot more people these days believed that a man who tried anything with a girl that young belonged nowhere but in prison.

He shook his head. “Is there anywhere you can go where that isn’t likely to happen?”

Shireen shook her head sadly. “Maybe Dorne?”

But she didn’t sound convinced.

“Right,” Bucky said firmly. “Well, it’s probably not a good idea to stay round here for long, with all these soldiers around. Otherwise this would be a good place to wait out the winter, until my friends find me…”

Shireen looked at him oddly; obviously he’d said something else that had startled her.

“Ser… it’s likely to be a long winter, the Maesters say the longest for many centuries. The last summer lasted almost ten years, but autumn has been short; the histories always say that’s the sign of a long hard winter…”

Bucky blinked. “Sorry, did you just say summer lasted ten _years_?”

“Yes? It’s the longest summer we’ve had in centuries, the maesters say. I was born during the last spring, but I do not remember it at all.”

“How long do your seasons usually last?” Bucky thought his voice was surprisingly calm, all things considered.

Shireen was still giving him that puzzled look. “Well, it’s always different – mostly seasons are three or four years, the maesters say, but every cycle is different. They say there was a fifteen-year summer once, before Aegon the Conqueror’s ancestors first came to Westeros, and in the North they have stories of the Long Night, a winter that lasted a whole generation…”

There were a lot of things Bucky wanted to say right in response to that, but none of them were particularly useful; he could have acted like Stark and babbled incomprehensibly about the rotation of the planet and why it shouldn't have been possible, but that wouldn’t be much use to Shireen.

“Thank you for letting me know,” he said finally.

“You are welcome, ser,” she said courteously, still frowning. “How long do the seasons last, in your lands?”

“Three months,” Bucky said promptly. “Four seasons to a year – though winters are longer and summers are shorter the further north you go.”

Shireen was staring at him wide-eyed. “Truly? You have all four seasons in a _single year_? How is there time for the crops to grow? The poor trees must be forever changing their leaves, and the animals their coats… You must live your lives in such a hurry!”

Bucky laughed. “I was thinking the same thing about your lives – it must be so strange to live your lives so slowly. I can’t imagine getting to your age without ever seeing spring. And it must be so hard to store enough food to last all winter…”

The laughter dropped off Shireen’s face again; inwardly Bucky kicked himself.

“You’re right. And this winter will be harder than usual, because so many men have been away fighting all through the autumn, instead of storing food and preparing for winter…”

Bucky nodded his head sadly; he didn’t want to say it out loud, but their prospects were looking worse and worse in this place. War was one thing – but a winter that would last ten _years_?

He and Shireen couldn’t stay here for long. That was all too clear.

The problem was where the hell they could _go_.

Bucky sent Shireen up to the loft area not long afterwards to sleep. She passed down a couple blankets from the bed up there for him, but he was comfortable enough next to the lingering warmth of the carefully banked fire.

He figured she’d be more comfortable going to sleep with a bit more separation between them – and he wanted to be downstairs, ready near the doors, in case any other soldiers came.

He doubted they’d follow this far through a snowstorm, but you never knew. They didn’t have guns here; that didn’t mean they were stupid. Bucky bet they’d know a hell of a lot more about the land and weather here than he would. It would be really fucking dumb to underestimate that knowledge.

Still, it was the weather that woke him up again and again through the night, not any intruders. The wind had picked up, howling around the roof and fences – it was a proper blizzard out there now. The house was sturdy, stone-walled, the thick layers of thatching on the roof weighed down by snow and more stones – it was unlikely that one storm would damage it. Still, it was hard not to worry, and wake at every sound outside.

It was still dark when Bucky finally woke up for good, but that wasn’t surprising; from what Shireen had said there were only a few hours of daylight each day now. He stirred up the fire and put more wood on it, set water to boil, filled and lit the oil lamps he found by the hearth, gave all the animals food and water. The dog let him come almost close enough to touch this time.

Shireen still seemed to be asleep, so he stripped down quickly to wash himself – no soap, not even a bathtub, but a basin of warm water and some rags did well enough.

Outside the blizzard was still raging; there was no way he and Shireen were going anywhere in that. But Bucky needed something to do, something to keep him busy.

By the time Shireen came down from the loft, he’d swept out the cows’ area, shovelling their manure into the larger heap outside. The kitchen was tidier now too; he’d cleaned and gone through and tallied up everything, all the food and other equipment they had. It wasn’t much, likely there was a larger food cellar elsewhere – but it was more than he and Shireen would need, as long as this blizzard cleared eventually.

“Good morning, ser,” Shireen said, politely enough, but there were dark circles under her eyes.

Bucky smiled at her and offered her another bowl of porridge, this one flavoured with a slightly different variety of dried fish. He’d eaten already, but he had another bowl just to keep her company.

Afterwards she helped him scrub the bowls and pots clean with coarse sand without having to be asked. Bucky figured she was as desperate for a distraction as he was, which was the only reason he asked her to come outside and help with the only other chore he could think of.

He didn’t ask her to help him dig through the snow for the bodies outside herself, but he passed her their weapons and any gear that wasn’t frozen onto their bodies, for her to sort and clean. The bodies themselves he stacked carefully near the eaves of the house, keeping the soldiers separate from the men and women he thought had been ordinary workers living on this farm.

Based on where the bodies were lying, he thought there'd been several groups - a few farmworkers who'd defended themselves as the soldiers attacked, and then a second group of farmers who'd driven the remaining soldiers off but died in doing so. That would explain why the house and all its supplies were untouched, at least. And he thought the two bodies being guarded by the dog might have died a little later than the others - died of cold or wounds, rather than killed outright in the fighting.

He didn't know why they hadn't tried to make it inside, but maybe they were just too badly wounded; or maybe they'd just wanted to stay together with their family.

God, he hated this part of war. Hated the useless waste of it all. These people had been civilians - and the soldiers were probably starving when they attacked, given Shireen's stories about her father's army. They would have seen this farm as their last chance at survival. There were no easy answers here, only tragedy.

“When the snow stops I’ll try to bury them,” he told Shireen, who nodded solemnly. It was all he could do for them.

“Better to burn them,” she said – which would be easier than digging into frozen ground, but he was surprised she suggested it, given everything. But he wasn’t going to ask if she didn’t want to talk about it. “You should keep any sigils you see – cloaks or weapons with symbols or marks – so anyone who comes looking might recognise them, and know how they died.”

That seemed unlikely, but it was a nice idea – and who knew, maybe one day someone would.

Back inside, the grim work done except for the two bodies by the dog who still would not let them get too close, Shireen pulled out a fine leather bag she’d been keeping under the coarse soldier’s furs. Bucky was surprised when she pulled out three finely bound books – more so, when she took her dagger and carefully cut one of the last blank pages out of the thickest of the books.

“I have no paper,” she said, on his curious look. “But I ought to leave word for whoever rightfully owns this farm, so they know what happened to their kin and where to seek payment for the food we have eaten.”

It was a nice thought – probably useless, but it was still sweet that Shireen suggested it.

“You should tell them that we’ll take the cows with us too,” Bucky said. “They won’t survive long here without human help. We should be able to sell them at a town somewhere.”

Shireen smiled ruefully. “I believe so, but I wouldn’t know. My father made sure I was taught many things, but not how to sell livestock!”

“I’m sure we’ll work it out,” Bucky said, trying not to laugh.

He leaned over Shireen’s shoulder; she was using one of the closed books as a surface to write on, setting it on the ground as close to an oil lamp as she could get. She had a long quill pen exactly like the movies –

Bucky frowned.

“I can’t read that,” he said, a little annoyed by the realisation. The shapes of the letters – if they were letters, and not syllables or something else – were like nothing he’d ever seen before.

Shireen turned her head and smiled at him. “Many people cannot read, it is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I can read,” Bucky said, trying not to snap. “I meant, I can’t read this script.”

“I’m sorry,” Shireen said, quietly enough to make Bucky wince and curse himself. “You speak our language as if you were born here.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I think the wizard did that. It’s just a pity he seems to have forgotten about reading.”

Shireen’s smile was brilliant.

“I can teach you! I’ve done it before. And if you already know how to read other scripts, it won’t be so hard to understand.”

Bucky smiled back at her. “I’d like that.”

Reading lessons took up most of the next three days – a blessing, given that the blizzard roared on unchanged outside. After simple chores and caring for the animals, there was nothing else to do.

Shireen was a good teacher, explaining things clearly and simply, and she was more firm than Bucky would have expected – completely unwilling to let even a small mistake slide. It suited him.

And fortunately Shireen’s language did use an alphabet, and one with only a couple more letters than English – easy enough to memorise compared to some languages Bucky had been forced to learn as the Winter Soldier.

By the third day he was at the point of sounding out words from the largest and simplest of Shireen’s books, a heavy volume with colourful illustrations on every other page.

“_In their time Ae-Aegon and his sisters were the last dragonriders_ – really? Dragons?”

“Of course! The Tarygaryens were from Valyria originally, the last of the dragonlords, and they couldn’t have conquered the Seven Kingdoms without their dragons. No army could stand against their fire – well, except the Dornish, I suppose, but they could hide in their deserts and mountains. All the other kingdoms had no choice but to bend the knee.”

“Wow,” Bucky said, imagining it. “What are they like? Have you ever seen one?”

“I wish I had!” Shireen burst out. “No, all the dragons died more than a century ago. That was why my uncle could rebel against the throne – if Aerys had a dragon, he would never have been foolish enough to try it.”

“I bet,” Bucky said, shaking his head. Armoured knights versus a giant flying, firebreathing lizard – this place really was like something out of a story. Except it was also brutally, gruesomely real.

Shireen took the book back from him and flipped forward a few pages to show him a picture that definitely could have come from a medieval manuscript back home – an armoured knight with a sword, on the back of an enormous dragon. Except the knight was a woman –

“Queen Visenya and her dragon Vhagar,” Shireen answered, in response to his question. “Aegon’s elder sister and wife. She fought side by side with him, alongside their younger sister Rhaenys and her dragon – Aegon could never have conquered the Seven Kingdoms without them.”

“Huh,” Bucky said; that seemed unusually enlightened – apart from the polygamous incest, which he wasn’t even going to touch. “Are female knights common in Westeros?”

“No,” Shireen said at once. “Women do not fight, the Faith forbids it. We are too weak, not fit for the exertion, the maesters say.”

Bucky tried and mostly failed to suppress his eyeroll.

Shireen hesitated. “They say – they say there might be dragons in the east again. And a woman the one to hatch them. My father didn’t believe it. But there are rumours that the last of the Targaryens, Aerys’ youngest daughter Daenerys who escaped into exile in the east, has managed to hatch three dragons…”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “Do you believe it?”

“I don’t know,” Shireen said slowly. “They say all the dragon eggs left in the world turned to stone when the adults died. So many people have tried to wake the stone eggs and hatch them, but no-one has ever succeeded…”

“Someone’s got to be the first, right?”

“I suppose.” Shireen looked thoughtful. “My father thought it was all lies and rumours – dragon eggs are rare and worth many times their weight in gold, so how could Daenerys have even gotten them, when they used to call her brother the Beggar King? And by all accounts he’s dead. But she _has _conquered the cities of Slaver’s Bay, somehow – how could she manage that without an army, unless she had dragons? They say she’s freed all the slaves there, they call her the Breaker of Chains…”

“I think I like the sound of her,” Bucky said; she was the first ruler he'd heard of here who seemed like she'd be worth investigating further.

Shireen leaned forward and grinned. “So do I."

The storm went on for two more days before the snow and the wind finally began to calm. By that time Bucky was reading fluently and Shireen had managed to tame the dog outside enough that it accepted their touch and even followed them to sleep inside; the dog turned out to be female, and unsurprisingly enough, Shireen decided to call her Vhagar.

It turned out Shireen had maps of the North and the whole Seven Kingdoms in one of her books, though they were patchy in places and didn’t seem to be accurately proportioned, based on the distances Shireen said she'd travelled with her father’s army.

Still, they were better than nothing. But studying them just cemented their problems: no matter where he looked, Bucky couldn’t find a place that seemed safe. They had to get out of the North, away from the remnants of Shireen’s father’s army and the hostile Boltons both, not to mention winter. But most of the immediate south was a warzone, or held by people who’d use Shireen for their own ends - if not both.

Bucky knew he’d figure something out eventually, but it was hard not to worry.

“Ser – Bucky,” Shireen said slowly, looking at where he was tracing the lines of the roads on her map with his fingers. It was only in the last day she’d become comfortable enough to call him by his first name - though she'd been oddly quiet this past day, too. “You could just take me to King’s Landing. The Lannisters might not be kind, but they won’t hurt me. I’m too useful for them. They’d pay you very well, and you’d – you’d be safe.”

“What?” Bucky just stared at her. “No.”

“But you’ve already saved my life. I don’t want to see you hurt protecting me! If you take me to King’s Landing we won’t need to worry about hiding or avoiding lords and armies. We’ll both be safe.”

Bucky shook his head, appalled that she was even considering it. “I already said no. Do you think I could live with myself, after handing you over to be treated like Sansa Stark?”

Shireen’s face was anguished. “But I don’t want you to be hurt for me! I’m not – if I was my father’s true heir, a boy, it would be different. But maybe this was always supposed to be my fate. I’m just a girl, I’m not worth it!”

“Oh, Shireen.” Bucky turned around so he was facing her properly. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or a boy or a princess or a cowherd. You’re just a kid, I’m not letting you get forced into a marriage you don’t want.”

Shireen was shaking her head no, back and forth.

“A few years ago, I was in a really bad place,” he said slowly. “Some people, bad people, took me prisoner. They had a way of taking people’s minds away, their will away. I don’t – I don’t remember much about that time, it’s just flashes. I didn’t remember who I was, didn’t remember what right and wrong was. I just did what I was told. And what they told me to do was – bad.”

Shireen was staring at him, wide-eyed and worried, but she didn’t say anything. Bucky forced himself to go on.

“Eventually I got free, started to wake up to myself – I was still dangerous, though, still couldn’t trust my own mind. But someone still took a chance on me. A king. He thought for a while I’d killed his father, and he still cared more about justice than his own revenge. He didn’t hold me responsible for what I hadn’t chosen to do, he offered me sanctuary until someone found a way to make me better.” Bucky shook his head, fighting to keep his voice even. “And do you know who saved me? The one who healed me, gave me my own mind back?”

Shireen shook her head, lost in his tale.

“A teenage girl. Not much older than you. She’s the king’s sister – a princess just like you.”

“Truly?” Shireen’s eyes were huge.

“Truly,” Bucky confirmed, nodding. “Shuri can fight, but she’s not really a warrior like her brother – she’s a genius, one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And she’s just a girl like you.”

Shireen’s eyes were suspiciously wet. “I’m not really like her though. I can’t do anything special…”

“Are you kidding? You know so much about history. Politics too. All you need is a chance to learn.” Bucky shook his head a little, smiling. “Shuri saved my life and my sanity. Do you think, next time I see her, I’m going to tell her I met a girl like her who needed help, and just tossed her aside? No way. You’re stuck with me, kid.”

Shireen just stared at him, eyes still wet - but she was smiling through her tears.

They packed up to leave the next day – the first clear day Bucky had seen in this place. It was so good to see sunlight again, a bright blue sky, even if it was still brutally cold.

A few days ago Shireen had found an assortment of packs and harnesses that were meant to be loaded onto the cattle, so she and Bucky could bring plenty of food and fodder with them, and a heavy leather tent – a big relief. Bucky had worried the cattle would starve en route with all their grass buried deep under the snow. Not to mention the prospect of weeks travelling with only snow caves and the occasional village for shelter.

They loaded the cows up together, tidied and latched the house. Finally they set up pyres – one for the soldiers and one for the farmworkers – outside the farmyard, and set the bodies to rest.

“We’d better go,” Bucky said finally, after the flames had died down. Shireen was still staring at the coals, but she didn’t seem scared anymore, only solemn.

Finally she nodded, clicking her fingers to call for the dog. Fortunately, Vhagar was better at keeping cattle in line than either of them. Between the three of them, Bucky thought they’d all make it okay.

They’d decided to make for a town called White Harbor, apparently the only real port or city in the North. Based on the maps and what Shireen had heard, they only had to follow the lake south to its outflow at the White Knife river; then they could follow the river south all the way to the harbor. Likely there’d be villages where they could sell the cows along the way.

Walking in the snow was hard work, at first, but soon they fell into the rhythm of it. The snow was shallower by the edge of the lake, lacking deep drifts, which helped make the walking a little easier.

Around midday they stopped to rest, feeding the animals and themselves.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Bucky said, after he and Shireen had finished chewing on their ration of dried fish. “Why do we have to stay in Westeros at all? There’s a whole continent out there to the east, right? With no lords there to chase you?”

Shireen looked startled, and then nodded. “I suppose so. I don’t know much about those lands, though, Bucky. The Free Cities are supposed to be much like Westeros, except that most of them keep slaves, and not everyone speaks our common tongue. And I only know a little Valyrian. I suppose I could learn…”

“That's alright. I have no idea if I speak Valyrian – we’ll find out when we get there, I guess. But even if Strange’s spell didn’t work that far, I’m pretty quick at picking up languages. And maybe we can both learn to read something new.”

Shireen smiled at him. “I’d like that! They say Volantis is the oldest city in the world, save for Qarth – can you imagine what their libraries must be like?”

Bucky grinned. “I was thinking about going a bit further than that, actually. What about Slaver’s Bay?”

“To see the dragons?” Shireen’s voice was an excited gasp. “Do you think they truly exist?”

“I think I’d like to find out. Wouldn’t you?”

Shireen’s grin was luminous. “Of course!”

Bucky looked over at her fondly. Damn, he was glad he’d fallen out of that portal when and where he did –

This was going to be _fun. _


End file.
